Surveillance sensors, such as those using sonar or radar, mounted on vehicles or ships may be used to identify objects of interest in a particular area. In highly cluttered environments, the false alarm rate of the sensor may exceed the desired rate and lead to a high number of false operator alerts and/or lost time in confirming detections. Attempts to eliminate false detections have resorted to a second post detection confirmation full sweep. A first pass is performed by a surveillance sensor to identify a possible initial detection of discrete objects in its field of view. A second pass is then performed by a high resolution sensor to confirm the detection or provide an indication that the initial detection was false. The second pass typically follows the same route as the first pass. Thus, time is lost in performance of the second pass.